Darling (36 page)

By the time Dennis pulled her off of him it was impossible to tell that the lump of red mush that connected to his neck had ever been a face.

Her tears stopped. Dennis hugged her tight from behind, but she just stared at the dead body in front of her. Her breath was hard and loud.

She kicked its foot and it slid off of the hood and into the water. The current dragged it under.

She leaned back and Dennis winced. She pulled his shirt off of him and wrapped it around his leg, pulled it so tight that he ground his teeth together, and then tied it off.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Looks fine to me.”

“I’m just doing what I see on TV.”

He laughed. “That was me with the shotgun. I doubt I could win any marksman awards with that thing, but luckily it was a shotgun and we were close range and…” He thought of the child’s head turning into mist and went silent.

The fire blazed behind them, its light reflecting from the clouds and causing the night sky to glow. Dennis thought about Mike burning and Allison bleeding out in a tub of steaming water.

Eileen scooted close to him and raised the light back into the sky. Its beam shot high into the dark clouds. The helicopters were loud overhead. A large white searchlight draped over them.

They held each other and shivered.

EPILOGUE

The flooding had kept emergency services away from the hill for almost forty-eight hours. By the time Lieutenant Graham and his men were able to make it to the site, the apartment complex and all of the abandoned buildings around it were nothing but soggy debris.

Muddy ash covered the hill. The fire had blazed out of control and consumed everything. He found it odd that a fire could grow so fast during such a rainstorm. It wasn’t unheard of, but still rare. Luckily it had limited itself to the area around Raynham.

He removed his helmet and scanned the area. Police and medical personnel joined his men in searching through the rubble for survivors. He didn’t hold out much hope. When the rescue helicopters flew through during the fire, all they had found were a young couple stranded on the roof of their car at the bottom of the driveway. They had been in shock and didn’t give much information on what caused the fire or how many people had made it out of the building. He couldn’t blame them. He could tell by the destruction that it must have been like Hell getting out of here.

The helicopters circled the building for nearly an hour after that, trying to help more survivors to safety. But no one else left the building before the flames finally dragged the roof in and it collapsed. He was surprised that it had crumbled. Again, such a thing wasn’t unknown—at high temperatures stone cracks and breaks—but he himself had never had to deal with such a mess. This was easily the worst fire he had ever seen in his years with the department, maybe even the worst fire in Knox County’s history.

The bodies they had recovered so far were burnt beyond all recognition. They would have to be identified with dental records before their families could be notified. He hated that part and could sympathize with every person who had a loved one living here. He and some of his men had gone to New York after the Towers came down to help with the rescue efforts. Not knowing if their spouses and children were alive affected some of the families much worse than when they were definitively told that the person hadn’t made it.

Some of the charred bodies here showed strange wounds—missing limbs, gaping holes in their torsos, throats parted open—that suggested a riot. He refused to speculate about it until the investigation was finished and autopsies had been performed, but wondered if something had barred the doors. He knew that had happened during Katrina. When a mob of people panicked during an emergency, violent rioting was inevitable.

Sergeant Best ran up to him, his yellow jacket was covered with mud and soot. He fought to catch his breath. “Lieutenant. I think we’ve got one.”

“Show me.”

The Sergeant led him to several firefighters and police officers clearing away a small pile of rubble. His heart pounded in his chest. He had prayed all morning that they would find even one person alive. If they could find one, then maybe there were others. They could be trapped in the rubble, or have made it into the woods (where search teams scoured with packs of hound dogs even now), but just one person lifted morale and redoubled search efforts.

He scrambled onto the pile, where an ash-covered hand dangled over bricks. He dove in with the men, pulling debris away until he saw her. She was naked, her shapely body covered in filth. Chunks of plaster clutched at her red hair. She sucked in a breath and crystal blue eyes met his.

A roach rested on her sternum and Lieutenant Graham smacked it away.

She reached up to him, tears filling her eyes. “Don’t move,” he said. “You may have internal injuries.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself up. She was inches from his mouth and he fought the urge to kiss her. God, she was beautiful.

She leaned close to his ear.

“Darling,” she whispered.

About the Author

Originally from Knoxville, TN, award-winning author B
rad
C. H
odson
currently resides in Los Angeles. His short fiction can be seen in a number of anthologies and his film, the zombie comedy
George: A Zombie Intervention
is available nationwide. When not reading or writing, he likes to lift heavy things made of iron and drag chains attached to other heavy things across fields. He also likes cooking, international travel, and writing about himself in third person.

Darling
is his first novel.

For more information, including a bibliography of

where you can find his work, please visit:

www.brad-hodson.com